The debut episode of the highly anticipated new Amazon Original Series, The Grand Tour, has become the biggest show premiere ever on Amazon Prime Video, with millions of Prime members streaming the first episode in the U.S., U.K., Germany, Austria and Japan over the opening weekend. Additionally, the day The Grand Tour debuted, total new Prime membership sign-ups exceeded all previous days with the exception of Amazon’s renowned Prime Day.

The Grand Tour is also receiving unprecedented customer and critical acclaim with the show being the top rated TV show or movie on IMDb, the world’s most popular source of movie and TV data, with an overall rating of 9.6 and over 10,000 votes. The show is rated 4.9 out of 5 stars by more than 15,000 customers on Amazon, and currently has a score of 97% on Rotten Tomatoes.

“The guys are back, doing what they do best – the chemistry between Jeremy, Richard and James is what makes The Grand Tour so entertaining,” said Jeff Bezos, Chief Executive Officer of Amazon, in a statement. “Their creativity, along with the amazing production quality and 4K HDR streaming, has Prime members responding in a big way. Kudos and congrats to the whole team.”

In addition to the unprecedented customer response, The Grand Tour has received outstanding critical acclaim from media around the world:

• “A brilliant beautiful spectacle.” – Guardian
• “Between the gear head banter and intoxicating visuals, The Grand Tour makes for a sweet escape from the real world we all live in.” – New York Post
• “The trio’s chemistry remains as brilliant as ever.” – The Independent
• “Fans are over the moon.” – Mail Online
• “The Grand Tour is stunningly beautiful.” – The London Evening Standard
• “The Grand Tour is this year’s most eagerly-anticipated TV show. And, judging by the reaction to its Thursday debut, it’s fair to say that The Grand Tour is a critical and commercial success. Together, both viewers and reviewers flooded social media after the first episode aired on Amazon Prime, and they were unified in their praise.” Daily Mirror
• “They’ve sort of somehow come up with the world’s first scripted comedy factual show, and it works perfectly.” – Digital Spy
• “Critics and fans welcome Jeremy Clarkson and co back with open arms.” – Newsweek

Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May have been filming the first season of The Grand Tour in far-flung locations across the globe. The studio portion of the show takes place in a travelling tent in locations ranging from Johannesburg to California, Scotland to Rotterdam, Lapland to Nashville, Whitby in North Yorkshire to Stuttgart and the final stop in Dubai. The first episode kicked off in California, when Jeremy, Richard and James took their famous studio tent to Dry Rabbit Lake. Thousands of fans from across the U.S. travelled to the desert near Lucerne Valley, outside of Los Angeles for The Grand Tour’s very own “Burning Van” festival which was part of the opener of the first ever episode. The Grand Tour is available to stream at www.amazon.com/thegrandtour with new episodes releasing weekly for 12 weeks. The official series trailer can be viewed here and to be the first to be notified of upcoming episodes and other news about The Grand Tour, fans can follow The Grand Tour on Facebook, Twitter and at Amazon.

Source: Amazon.com, Inc.

MacDailyNews Take: Apple blew this by being shortsighted and cheap.

Of course, The Grand Tour streams in 4K, so Apple’s inexplicably handicapped Apple TV can’t even handle it anyway. Like we said: Shortsighted and cheap.

I’m assuming MDN is an Apple shareholder. Would a shareholder want Apple to get into a business that doesn’t make a profit and may never make a profit? Amazon is famous in investment circles for dominating market share at zero or negative profitability. MDN has often championed Apple avoiding commodity businesses. It is disingenuous for MDN to criticize Apple for this instance of avoiding a low or no profit business (although I do agree Apple should have included 4k video in the current Apple TV, even if there was not much 4k content or actual 4k TVs out there when the device came out). Sometime in the not too distant future, Wall Street will wake up to the reality that Amazon, although having all the business, is never going to make a significant profit. It will not be pretty.

MDN is now home to the no-vision, entitlement crybaby stupid generation who change their mind at the slightest hint of “Ooo…shiny shiny…mmmm.
Core competence and business are irrelevant dirty words here now.

But all here cheer for Apple to have a profit monopoly in mobile phones? It is clear that Apple thinks success of the iPhone is the template to all future success. Unfortunately Apple is wrong. Apple needs to deliver powerful Macs without gimmicks. Apple needs to produce truly professional grade software. Apple needs to offer a full range of accessories that enhance the users lives. And like a company with more resources than any other company in the history of the world, Apple needs to delight its users more than once every 4 years or so. Consistent updates to keep hardware fresh is the minimum expected of a company that supposedly makes Pro gear. Or does Cook just expect to sell fashion accessories inthe future?

“The day The Grand Tour debuted, total new Prime membership sign-ups exceeded all previous days with the exception of Amazon’s renowned Prime Day.”

How many 4K Apple TV units would Apple have sold if they had signed Clarkson, Hammond and May instead of Amazon (and if they’d actually got off their fat RSU-laden asses and bothered to make an Apple TV 4K for Christmas 2016)?

Apple CEO Tim Cook is a caretaker CEO – and not a very good one at that. Apple SVP Eddy Cue is a joke who should have been eased out years ago in favor of someone who can get the necessary deals done.

Yeah I used to parrot that one, but not so convinced now, perception often overrules simple logic and this would have given them the shot in the arm their concreted feet badly need in public and critical perception. I suppose if logic remained supreme and unchallenged Apple would never have survived the 90s. Fact is Apple needed to do just what Amazon has done with prime so that it could get into the area it needed to be to not only sell kit but to supply it with content directly and through that put pressure on others to cut deals to do so from others. Apple seriously needs to restock on lateral thinking, the old days of waiting for an automatic, instant big return on wide margins for a new opportunity/product are for the most part long gone. After all if it were totally adverse to accepting that fact, it would not bother with ApplePay or music streaming which are hardly big earners in their own right as things stand but form part of a bigger strategy. However more widely its refusal to see the bigger picture is certainly blinding it to opportunities in a world where the competition is far more sensitive to them, nimble and proactive in exploiting them and far better at competing with Apple on all levels even in its heartland, they are taking a leaf out of the motherships book here. Lethargy, fear and glacial are the Words that instantly come to mind about the management style of Apple presently however with little go us or imagination.

I wonder if Apple ever considers the psychology factor and when people start perceiving there are better products elsewhere with more current technology and are tempted to bolt? In my opinion that should NEVER happen.

All Apple products, in addition to iPhones, should be State Of the Art, considerate of their core & pro users and incredibly lustworthy, not grumbleworthy. Don’t know if this is a shortsighted mandate from the top, Jony Ives, basic being out of touch or impending wonderfulness yet to come that addresses all our concerns but it seems at no point in time should Apple users ever become Apple disenchanted or disillusioned.

Kill the magic and you kill the attraction of the product line/ecosystem.

Totally and unquestionably insightful comment there and come thing I fear Apple is losing sight of thinking their world will always spin on its axis. The problem is that the decision making and lack of self awareness that causes it usually takes years to reveal itself in serious decline. But the sort of de idiots Apple is making now, putting short term preservation of profit over any semblance of vision and building for the future in ways that generate bigger and growing profits through investment in ideas and technology. The perception of the former tactic from the outside is clearly damaging to the brand as the present widespread commentary shows, and thus scary to see becoming increasingly the norm at Apple. Worse it is totally shortsighted as Apple lives by its brand and once it’s damaged by being no longer associated with the best available then I’m not sure what value it will retain over time. Throttling download speeds on iPhones is but one symptom of the management losing touch with what had made the brand so valued. Much more undermining could create a rock slide in sentiment amongst those it needs to keep onside. But then production guys and accountants don’t see the big picture rather like the ex salesman at Microsoft.

Makes you realise how great value the BBC is. £650k per episode before, now nearly £4.5m per episode plus whatever they’re spending on advertising. I couldn’t see where all the money went at all. It was pretty dull as things go.

If you couldn’t see where the money went, you’re fscking blind as well as totally ignorant of the costs of filming, staging, and editing such a production. The first episode was sumptuous in all respects.

It wasn’t nearly 5 times as impressive looking. They put a tent in the desert and filmed a load of cars (which were mostly obscured by all the dust) from helicopters, and then drove some expensive cars around tracks and along empty mountain roads – like they always do. I’m not saying it wasn’t good, but the BBC version was great value for money.

No, it is better on Amazon. Had Apple tried it would be under Eddie Clueless Cue and he would hire some no talent rapper to try their hand at directing as a diversity statement. How is that rental rap service doing, Tim? Better than 800 million iTunes accounts and after over a year of giving the shit away you are number 2.

No comments about the show itself? Anyone else a bit disappointed? Clarkson seemed almost tame, Hammond just blubbered his usual and typical slogans, and May kept on being the pincushion. A whole lot of just the same, but this time, really inane and shudderingly dull and stupid jokes, lots of inside pandering and shilling, and an audience that looked even more hired then the BBC’s. Ouch, this was dull and flat, and regardless of the production values, fairly abysmal,